In the aspect of the invention concerned with production of coated turbine engine shrouds. The old technology improved upon by the present invention is set forth in U.S. Pat. Nos. 4,842,953 and 4,937,042, both to Perkins and Smith, referred to herein as the Perkins patents. In these patents the patentees describe the need in gas turbine engines to achieve as great a reduction in leakage as possible between stationary and rotating gas turbine members and the use of abradable seals on turbine engine shroud segments to effect control of leakage. These patents describe the formation of suitable abradable seals on turbine engine shrouds by a biscuit process in which two specific, composition-limited powder alloys are mixed and compacted to a preform exhibiting self-supporting "green strength". The preform is suitably pre-sintered by taking its temperature to a temperature at which the lower, but not the higher melting alloy melts, i.e. above the liquidus temperature of the lower melting alloy but not as high as the liquidus temperature of the higher melting alloy. The resulting preform is a "biscuit" of fixed shape; thus fixed in shape the biscuit must of necessity be closely congruent with the article to be coated, e.g. a shroud surface, since the preform biscuit by the Perkins patent process is brittle and cannot subsequently be flexed to conform to any surface but the intended one. Once securely placed on the shroud surface, the biscuit preform is heated to a temperature at which the lower melting alloy powder liquid phase sinters the powder composition, and, then further heated to temperatures at which the interdiffused powered alloys fuse together and bond to the substrate. The patentees require defined levels of silicon and yttrium in the overall composition, the presence of one and not the other in the respective alloy powders, which with other criteria imposed severely limits the number of alloys useful in the method and the variety of products to be obtained. Alloys containing substantial amounts of aluminum, yttrium, or titanium, or other metals prone to form surface oxides, such as Inco 738 containing about 4% by weight of each of aluminum and titanium, are advantageously coated with the compositions and methods of this invention. By the use of the invention compositions and methods such oxides are stripped from the coating composition and from the surface of the alloy articles being coated, as well, allowing bonding where the presence of these oxides had been thought to preclude it. For yttrium containing alloys such as CO-159, increased amounts of yttrium can be used in coatings in accordance with the invention beyond the 0.1% by weight taught as the maximum in the Perkins patents. This is because, in contradistinction to the Perkins patents, the present invention provides for stripping the oxides generated in the coatings or on the article surface before coating. Oxide presence is inimical to effective bonding of the biscuit to the substrate.